High Plains school put on hold

School board decides to wait 6 months to receive more data

The Thompson School District Board of Education voted Wednesday night against beginning the design phase for High Plains School, a K-8 site planned to serve the growing population of east Loveland.

With board member Denise Montagu absent, colleagues Pam Howard and Lori Hvizda Ward supported approving the design of the school, which will cost an estimated $700,000, but board members Bob Kerrigan, Donna Rice, Bryce Carlson and Carl Langner voted to table the matter for six months.

Kerrigan said he didn't feel there was adequate data to support approving High Plains' design on Wednesday. Thompson senior staffers Mike Jones and Steve Towne said the school, at a total cost of roughly $16 million, will be paid for entirely by tax increment financing (TIF) money.

Kerrigan said he'd like to see a comprehensive plan of what the district would do if that TIF money proves insufficient. He also requested numbers on whether Thompson would fill the school with students already enrolled in the district, or from elsewhere.

High Plains has been proposed as an environmentally focused STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) school, and Langner, a former engineer at Shell Oil Co., said he was "thrilled" by that emphasis. But he also voiced concern that the environmental concentration could muddy the STEM curriculum and "indoctrinate" students to believe what he described as false narratives of climate change.

"These are nothing more than political agendas that have no place in our schools," he said.

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"He's entitled to make that statement," Kerrigan said, adding that Langner's comments "kind of surprised" him.

The conversation on High Plains didn't involve any public comment on the matter, as a motion to allow audience members to speak on Wednesday's agenda items also failed by a 4-2 margin. Langner initially expressed interest in hearing from the public, though he didn't vote that way.

Later in the meeting, the board engaged in another debate on how to handle public commentary in the future. That discussion was still ongoing at press time.